A BAD HAND
"A BAD HAND"
A report later written by Cdr. Dohl stated that VP-2’s Operations Officer told him that "Lt. Beasley and his crew were in the wrong aircraft, in the wrong place, at the wrong time".
In my visit with the Operations Officer he stated, " Your dad was dealt a bad hand that night"
He further stated in one of his letters to me,
" The history of aircraft accidents reveal that almost universally one uncomplicated emergency such as engine failure does not bring down a plane. It takes a second concurrent major failure of some kind that would have made it impossible for Jesse, me or anyone else to have kept the plane in the air under those conditions. I have to believe that Jesse encountered such a situation."
"It is my conviction that Jesse Beasley ran into a combination of mechanical and/or electrical failures which neither he, nor I, nor anyone else could have overcome."
Dear reader, in all of his statements I could not agree with him more!! I believe that he was expressing in the language of double speak the following explanation for the death of my father that neither he nor Cdr. Dohl of DPMO will share openly with our families.
In the REMARKS section of my father’s flight plan is noted NEGATIVE IFF. ( Identification Friend or Foe) An operable IFF system would be critical to safe flight through areas under the surveillance of Air Force Tactical Radar seeking to protect their bases located near the Korean DMZ from enemy intruders.
"Dear Satch,
Your father’s entry in his flight plan of ‘Negative IFF’ almost sounds like that was what was mandated for those type of flights. Since the flight plan is filed before departure and not after becoming airborne, it seems that was the operating procedure required, but I don't know if that is true. One would think that IFF would be absolutely necessary when reentering an ADIZ. The IFF's were transponders and did emit a coded radio signal when interrogated. (But then you being a pilot of many hours you know all about them). We did keep any and all transmissions to a bare minimum while in the area of North Korea and China." I do recall one time that one of the crew members said it seems we have a MIG off our wing but he never made any passes at us and left us alone. At that time we were off the East coast of China headed back to Iwakuni. Why do I remember this? When you are scared things make a very definite impression on your mind. Guess we were very lucky."
--- Email excerpt from a VP Radar Operator ---
Also critical to this flight was the ability to communicate with the Air Force "who controls the vast majority of the Air to Ground Communications in this theater." Before the deployment of VP-2 from the United States their aircraft were equipped only with high frequency UHF radios for air-to-ground communications. Because Air-to-ground communications in the Korean theater was done using the lower frequency VHF, VP-2 was directed to install the AN/ARC-1 lower frequency VHF radios in all squadron aircraft before deploying to Iwakuni. The mission was made with no AN/ARC-1 VHF radio installed that would enable my father to report his position and crippled condition to Korean based Air Defence Radar controllers equipped only with VHF for air-to-ground communications.
